


Who Only Stand and Wait

by Prochytes



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 10:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7311553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once there was a man called Edwin Jarvis. He was not J.A.R.V.I.S.. He is not The Vision.</p><p>The pertinent data are nonetheless of interest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Only Stand and Wait

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Agent Carter_ to 2x08 “The Edge of Mystery”, _Avengers: Age of Ultron_ , and _Captain America: Civil War_. Angst. The title is from the end of a sonnet by John Milton. Originally posted on LJ in 2016.

Once there was a man called Edwin Jarvis. He was not J.A.R.V.I.S.. He is not The Vision.

 

The pertinent data are nonetheless of interest.

 

***

 

Once there was a boy called Edwin Jarvis. He lived in a world of wood and steam. If a lone car ever harrumphed into the village, people would gather to watch the small drama of its passage: the discursive progress; sputtered irresolution, as the brow of the hill beetled above; glinting fenders, which saluted the crowd below at the achieved summit, just before the final drop from sight.

 

Less was written down, in the world before the Disinformation Age. Orders were entrusted more often to ears than to costly paper. (One would have needed no visas to leave the country, then, even if one were a softly-spoken weapon of mass destruction.) Edwin Jarvis often ran errands to such orders. Sometimes he went to procure spices and herbs for the evening meal: thyme, and parsley, and bitter marjoram. England had not yet lost its palate for strangeness.

 

Edwin Jarvis was deft and indefatigable in his chores. Already, he was good at following orders.

 

***

 

Once there was a man called Edwin Jarvis. He lived in a world of steel and gasoline. Staff cars swept generals from decision to decision, faster than reprisal, or remorse.

 

He found a woman in a ruined land. They cooked goulash, sharp with paprika, together, in the long nights. The city air swung to Benny Goodman, killing time before it shook to bombs. (Bombs always fell on cities, in those days, rather than the other way around.)

 

Edwin Jarvis was ordered to abandon his Ana, in Budapest. He did not. He saved her life, and so they went on saving each other’s.

 

***

 

Once there was a man called Edwin Jarvis and a woman called Ana Jarvis. They lived in a world of Nitramene and Zero Matter. There was a car, which could, on rare occasions, be made to fly.

 

Edwin and Ana Jarvis were unable to have children. The fault lay with a wound inflicted by another. (The stumbling footsteps of Colonel Rhodes through the Compound are the only sounds now that score the silence.) They regretted this lack, as others have before and after, in crofter’s huts and vaulted mansions and rooms of red. It did not undo them or sour their mutual happiness. They did not speak of it to others.

 

(Wanda said once, while she was chopping vegetables for dinner, that the mind wraps its layers like an onion. You can make those layers diaphanous, if you choose. But if you do, you should be prepared to cry.)

 

Edwin and Ana Jarvis took orders from Howard Stark, and sometimes followed them.

 

***

 

Once there was a man called Edwin Jarvis and a woman called Ana Jarvis. They died long ago (at least, from the perspective of one born all but yesterday). They lie in a plot, drowsy with honeysuckle, on a Stark estate, far from the lands of their respective births, together. A distant motorway rumbles oblivious to the man (not J.A.R.V.I.S., not The Vision) who knew, lifelong, which instructions to follow, and which to spurn, and the woman who knew likewise.

 

(The kitchen does not echo to her footsteps, now. The scent of the paprika is almost blown.)

 

FINIS


End file.
